Under the Bed
Aug 29 2009


I peer under the bed,
the whites of my eyes
mooning into the darkness,
blinking as they adjust.
Missing socks.
Coins, dropped from emptied pockets.
Dust bunnies
reminding me of ancient tombs,
the magnitudes
hiding in plain sight.

Twice a year, the sun is low enough
to stretch a finger of light
into this secret fortress.
After all those millions of miles
in a straight unbroken line
its journey over,
revealing dust mice
in bleached white relief.

But the furthest corner
is still out of reach,
where dust bunnies cavort
wantonly,
and dust mice shamelessly breed,
miscegenating
proliferating
contaminating the entire place
with their progeny.

When we moved the fridge
dust bunnies scattered like tumbleweeds.
Word went out.
Under the bed, they prepared their defense.

So even after they drop the bomb
all that will be left
are cockroaches,
furiously scurrying for shelter.
And tiny balls of dust,
rolling along
picking-up the survivors
growing to gargantuan size
— mutant dust mice
colonizing the world,
contemptuously out in the open
in the eerie greenish glow.



An excellent poem -- Whirlpool -- by one of my favorites, George Bilgere, was posted on the Writer's Almanac recently. He used the expression "dust mice" (not "dust mites", but "dust mice"), which didn't seem right at all: I've always only heard "dust bunnies". After reading that, the expression stuck in my head, and I felt this overwhelming urge to play around with the idea. This poem, for better or worse, is the result (so far).

(I can't reproduce Whirlpool here. But if you'd like to see it, here's a link: ....no, the link isn't working. Instead, just type "writer's almanac" into your search engine, and then type "whirlpool" in the "search poem titles" line.)